Category: music

A new study says that you can improve your health (mental and physical) by working out to certain kinds of music. “According to the journal Heart & Lung, a team of Ohio State University researchers has found that exercising to music — at least to Antonio Vivaldi — not only improves physical conditioning, it also improves mental conditioning. People get smarter if they work out while listening to certain music.”

Canada’s Junos and Quebec’s Felix Awards celebrate Canadian musicians. But where the Felix finds its winners from artists who make their careers almost entirely in Canada, the Junos have been increasingly dominated by Canadians who have struck it big south of the border.

Time once again for the Amateur Van Cliburn piano competition. It’s actuallt called the International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, and 75 pianists from eight countries and 27 states will compete in Fort Worth from May 31 through June 5. “The field of competitors, once again heavy on people from the medical professions, will perform in a three-part, elimination-style competition at Texas Christian University’s Ed Landreth Auditorium. The 75 were selected by the foundation from 110 recorded applications and written statements from amateur pianists age 35 and over.”

Why is the Long Island Philharmonic sort of problem is one that confronts almost anyone who presents live classical music. The ‘event’ aspect of live music has been challenged on one hand by the advent of electronic reproduction of music and on the other by what we might think of as the “museum-ification” of classical music generally. The development of new technologies that make performed music readily and easily available has had a profound effect not only on how and when people listen to music but on what listeners expect to hear.”

A lost musical score by JS Bach has turned up in the estate of a Japanese pianist. “The 1728 composition, called “Wedding Cantata BWV 216,” was found among the papers of Japanese pianist Chieko Hara, who died in Japan in 2001 aged 86.”

“Was he a faithful servant of the Soviet regime, as his public behavior and official pronouncements might suggest? Or was he a secret dissident who expressed with musical signs and subtexts all the protest he could not make in words? Or did he live and work, like so many Soviet citizens, in a complicated gray area between those extremes?” Two new books revive the controversy but fail to deliver the definitive answer.

Recording companies are trying all sorts of new ways to deliver their product to consumers. “Offerings for consumers that are already available or in the works range from free song downloads (awarded after buying a bottle of soda or a cheeseburger) to the ability to walk into a Starbucks and choose from thousands of songs to make a CD.”

Recording execs are blasting a Canadian judge’s decision that allows music file-sharing. “But ask anyone else connected in some way with music — from artists and small record company managers to listeners and file sharers themselves — and you’ll get myriad views on the matter, pro and con. The decision Wednesday in a Toronto Federal Court against the Canadian Recording Industry Association’s attempt to sue file sharers in Canada doesn’t seem to have changed opinions much.”

We are living in the age of the producer. That’s the guy who takes the music and wrestles it around until it comes out a hit. Producers are now stars in their own right, and their status is only increasing now that anyone with a laptop computer can do what formerly took a roomful of mixing boards. Four producers talk about how their business has changed.

The American music series “American Mavericks” has won a Peabody Award”American Mavericks’ tells the story of the tradition-breaking composers who shaped the development of American music, from Charles Ives to Henry Brant, Harry Partch, Laurie Anderson, Steve Reich and others.”